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Detergent Company Creates First Self-Laundering T-Shirt, But Only In Poland For Now

October 1, 2013
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To the delight of college kids, single guys and just plain lazy bums everywhere, Tide, the world’s most popular brand of laundry detergent, just got into the apparel business — introducing a t-shirt that washes itself.

Well, sort of. The shirt is actually the brainchild of the “mad men” at Leo Burnett advertising agency. And the branch of the agency that created it is not on Madison Avenue, but in Warsaw, Poland. Apparently, Polish college kids are just as laundry-averse as their American counterparts.

The shirt is available only in Poland currently. No word on plans to bring it to the United States.

The shirt features a design of a “mom” crying tears of despair because her deadbeat son has once again brought his laundry home from college, saddling her with the chore of cleaning it.

The trick is, this shirt has the detergent already in it. So all mom has to do is toss it in a washing machine and it comes out nice and clean — and mom’s tears have been washed away. The tears are printed on the shirt in a type of ink that disappears with washing.

The idea is to teach young good-for-nothings how easy it is to do laundry.

The shirt does come with one significant disadvantage. There’s only enough detergent in the fabric for one wash. After that, it’s back to washing it the old-fashioned way, by actually pouring detergent into the washing machine.

Tide already owns 30 percent of the laundry detergent market, more than twice its closest competitor. Check out the Polish ad for the self-laundering shirt, below.